Alex Blackmore: photography, construction, an analogue Esper Machine

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Alex is building a series of box constructions that draw on photographs of the town taken from slightly different angles and era. An earlier  communique read:

 "Morning. Images. one of working out the angles to get my perspectives right. 

 This will be the classic photo looking down the street past Oxfam, or the Seatal as it was called. (wonder if this is a mangled rendition of Seattle, with the klondike  eventually being built at the end of the street.

 Have a vague thought that Seatal may have something to do with rope making...but no leads on that.) One of a pair of scissors that snapped as I was cutting up cardboard. More to follow."
Here's what followed..along with the images Alex refers to, and a few thoughts in response.
SJB house project whatever its name is

With the SJB house project, I wanted to contribute something that would provide a long term resource for the cottage.

I had been spending a pleasant afternoon browsing Keswick museum.. traditional museum, a selection of objects put in boxes..and found the act of mooching over to a box to survey its contents fairly interesting.

But the stand-out exhibit was definitely the mummified cat, hidden away in a glass topped draw.  


The thrill of having to peek into a draw to be faced with a dry dead cat, was worth the price of admission (£5.00)
My take away from this experience was that placing a object in a box invites a more intimate curiosity.
Having something more interesting than a Langdale axe head in the box is better.

With this in mind I selected some photographs from the Civic Society collection to work with, my idea was to make copies of these as little 3D boxed scenes.
An adventure in a box.  
Something that 10 year old me would find more interesting than the
panels of text that tend to go with museum displays.
And would hopefully hook the imagination.

After a few experiments with cardboard boxes & tape I settled on a set of dimensions, that made a box large enough to work in & also not being to shadowy to display clearly.
I selected fibreboard to make the boxes out of (mostly because it is light)
The next stage was to cut some fibreboard to size & discover that there were no fittings that would do for finishing the boxes.
So after a quick look at what was available, I ended up making some
myself out of aluminium strip.

With the boxes completed, I can now start on the contents, the little scenes that go inside.
Picking the most complex image to start with, one that would have lots of different angles & cuts in it.
This decision was to test the most of my “presumed” build process early on (so less surprises later)
The initial process was to make as much of the volume/Area of the image in scrap card.
This was to test the angles that will sell the forced perspective.
            
With this  done, it's down to transferring the designs to Plasticard.

 Alex

I have a photo of my Grans house in was what St Thomas Avenue, Leeds. I found it online in  vast archive of Leeds images, it was taken as part of a housing survey in 1968, just before the street was levelled along with most of the area.. I have  a  memory of someone looking out of her window and drawing attention to  a man  in the middle of the Street with a camera.  In the photo my Gran's neighbours, Mr and Mrs Varley have also noticed and are watching the photographer from their doorstep.  There is washing on the line. There's my bedroom window. I think I'm in the front room. But nothing can be seen of the interior of number 7 beyond its net curtains, and beyond them a soft patch of tantalising pale. 

Given an Esper machine....standard issue in 'Blade Runner"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkcU0gwZUdg... we could zoom in and out, choose an angle, mine the image for detail.
But this black and white image from the 60's only holds so much information and no amount of enhancement can either add to it or reveal more.

As an image within a civic collection  it teems with information and plays its part in establishing a consensus on the period. Viewed in context with others of the same street and the same district it is a unit in a vast assemblage of planes, tones, known and unknown figures, passing cars, advertising..  but as a portal into my childhood it takes me so far and then shuts me out as sure as anything else on the outside of that front door ( it was green, btw). A second image  might show more... taken from 12 inches nearer or to either side or a minute earlier..  


In this work I think Alex is responding to a common desire in the face of two-dimensions and an overwhelming Proustian rush..the wish for an Esper Machine, to sidle into the surface of the image and crawl around within it's planes and explore it's shadows. 





                                                        There's more on Keswick Museum here..










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